After upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 (release candidate), I've recently noticed stuttering in video playback. That might very well also be related to my using the intel 2.5.0 xorg driver. But Phoronix now made a correct examination and found out Ubuntu is getting slower and slower since 7.04.

Complexity or just bad programming? Is it related to the kernels gettings worse and if so, is that related to the Ubuntu patches or the vanilla kernel? I'm curious for hopefully following explanations.